Neu! have a lot to answer for. Their best bits can be transcendent, their worst bits lazy and a little pointless and even a little contemptuous. We all have days like that, but Neu! were the exemplar; they wrote the script and others followed. We all loved them despite their patchy output (perhaps because of it) and many attempted to emulate them. Stereolab did it pretty well, I thought, but the Stereolab imitators sounded exactly like a copy of a copy of a copy; with the referent long gone, the essence lost, the image shattered.

I’m not saying what you think I’m saying here about Villalog. “Düsseldorf Dub” has that Neu! hum, the ever-so-slightly tumbling/scraped and slurred drums but… Actually, it’s the drums I want to talk about. Drums are big throughout this album; are present even when

Twitter

"When they’re all playing harmonising black metal riffs, it creates a sound as full and dense as the forests of Washington State that inspire their eco-friendly riff collage" @wittrofficial @aluk_todolo live at Heaven https://t.co/FbWfunzE6w

"The English Heretic project has been consistently putting out strange and beautiful collections for a while now and this release comes with an OZ-style booklet, lurid and bloody and filled with ephemera..." https://t.co/EHK6vpWzZc